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Inequality Patterns in Western-Type Democracies: Cross-Country Differences and Time Changes

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  • Timothy Smeeding
  • Andrea Brandolini

Abstract

This paper compares levels and trends in income inequality in industrialized nations. In the mid-1990s, the United States had the highest overall level of inequality of any rich OECD nation, while Northern and Central European countries had the lowest levels. Using a variety of national sources, no common trend is observed in the last quarter of a century. The inequality of disposable incomes increased in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s, and in Sweden and Finland in the 1990s; it rose somewhat in the late 1990s in Canada and the Federal Republic of Germany, but it showed no persistently upward trend in the Netherlands, France and Italy. The paper shows the importance of public redistribution in determining the inequality of disposable income.

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  • Timothy Smeeding & Andrea Brandolini, 2007. "Inequality Patterns in Western-Type Democracies: Cross-Country Differences and Time Changes," LIS Working papers 458, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:458
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    Cited by:

    1. Chiara Mussida & Maria Laura Parisi, 2016. "The effect of economic crisis on regional income inequality in Italy," DISCE - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali dises1614, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    2. Kemp-Benedict, Eric, 2011. "Political regimes and income inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 266-268.
    3. Caminada, Koen & Goudswaard, Kees & Koster, Ferry, 2010. "Social Income Transfers and Poverty Alleviation in OECD Countries," MPRA Paper 27345, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Frank Cowell & Carlo Fiorio, 2011. "Inequality decompositions—a reconciliation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 509-528, December.
    5. Koen Caminada & Chen Wang, 2011. "Disentangling Income Inequality and the Redistributive Effect of Social Transfers and Taxes in 36 LIS Countries," LIS Working papers 567, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. Elena Bárcena-Martin & Jacques Silber, 2013. "On the generalization and decomposition of the Bonferroni index," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(4), pages 763-787, October.
    7. Alex M. Gurn, 2016. "Courting Corporate Philanthropy in Public Education," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(2), pages 21582440166, April.
    8. Goudswaard, Kees & Caminada, Koen, 2008. "The redistributive impact of public and private social expenditure," MPRA Paper 20178, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Cecilia García-Peñalosa, 2010. "Income distribution, economic growth and European integration," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(3), pages 277-292, September.
    10. Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2013. "Factor Components of Inequality: A Cross-Country Study," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 689-727, December.
    11. Frank Cowell & Carlo V. Fiorio, 2010. "GINI DP 4: Inequality Decompositions," GINI Discussion Papers 4, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    12. Timothy M. Smeeding, 2005. "Public Policy, Economic Inequality, and Poverty: The United States in Comparative Perspective," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(s1), pages 955-983, December.
    13. Edward N. Wolff & Ajit Zacharias & Thomas Masterson & Selcuk Eren & Andrew Sharpe & Elspeth Hazell, 2012. "A Comparison of Inequality and Living Standards in Canada and the United States Using an Expanded Measure of Economic Well-Being," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_703, Levy Economics Institute.
    14. Carol Vidal & Flavius R. W. Lilly, 2019. "Factor Structure and Concurrent Validity of the British Perceived Inequality in Childhood Scale in a Sample of American College Students," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(5), pages 1287-1300, November.
    15. Broer, Tobias, 2014. "Domestic or global imbalances? Rising income risk and the fall in the US current account," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 47-67.
    16. Elvire Guillaud & Michaël Zemmour, 2017. "The redistributive preferences of the well-off," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01652706, HAL.
    17. Kaushik Basu, 2016. "Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9299.
    18. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    19. Veli-Matti Ritakallio & Olof Bäckman & Johan Fritzell, 2011. "Income inequality and poverty: do the Nordic countries still constitute a family of their own?," LIS Working papers 563, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    20. Peter Lambert & Thor Thoresen & Runa Nesbakken, 2010. "On the Meaning and Measurement of Redistribution in Cross-Country Comparisons," LIS Working papers 532, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    21. Corgnet, Brice & Sutan, Angela & Veszteg, Róbert F., 2011. "My teammate, myself and I: Experimental evidence on equity and equality norms," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 347-355, August.
    22. Riccardo Massari, 2009. "Is income becoming more polarized Italy? A closer look with a distributional approach," Working Papers 1, Doctoral School of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome.
    23. Caminada, Koen & Goudswaard, Kees & Wang, Chen, 2012. "Disentangling income inequality and the redistributive effect of taxes and transfers in 20 LIS countries over time," MPRA Paper 42350, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    24. Fochesato, Mattia & Bowles, Samuel, 2015. "Nordic exceptionalism? Social democratic egalitarianism in world-historic perspective," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 30-44.

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    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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